My contention is not only that all "psychiatric wards" a crime.
I further contend that they are totally unnecessary and always have been.
My two involuntary stays in psychiatric "hospitals" were unjustified and unnecessary imprisonments.
These two imprisonments were crimes.
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The first hospitalisation was voluntary. I had been having a hard time and so decided to see if going "on the ward" as others called it, might possibly help me. I knew that it was something to be done in extremis. I judged my situation to be bleak. I genuinely thought that the hospital might help me and might be a place of healing as the name suggested.
As soon as I arrived I realised that it was a prison, that it did not really exist to help people, that its staff were jailors and that being "on the ward" was an unnecessary dehumanising torment that no one wanted to undergo. Admittedly, there were aspects of the experience that were designed to, and to an extent did, help people.
But mainly the psychiatrist had to keep you in there for a certain amount of time in order not to openly recognise the fact that it is a prison and not a hospital. If he let you out when you wanted to go then that would be to admit that it was a prison and not a hospital. They had to go through the pretence of it being a therapeutic environment of some kind, and that the amount of time you spent there bore some correlation with your "mental health". If it did it was probably more time inside meant more unhealthy.
Admittedly, it was a literal asylum of some kind for some people, people could get rest and escape from stress. But still it was also capable of being very unpleasant.
What do you need when you are distressed? One answer is certainly peace and quiet. The hospital was not often able to offer peace and quiet.
The only solution is to outlaw involuntary detention.
I asked to leave and was told that I could but that if I did I would be taken back the next day by police section.
The second tour/imprisonment began with me being taken to the hospital by police section. I hadn't done anything. I had just been distressed. I was fully in the role of a "mentally ill" person and was seen as such not just by the authorities but also by my friends and family. I regard what my friends and family did in this situation as a betrayal. But how are they to realise that psychiatry is a crime?
The situation I was in this time was compounded by the length of the first hospitalisation and all that that had entailed.
I further contend that they are totally unnecessary and always have been.
My two involuntary stays in psychiatric "hospitals" were unjustified and unnecessary imprisonments.
These two imprisonments were crimes.
------
The first hospitalisation was voluntary. I had been having a hard time and so decided to see if going "on the ward" as others called it, might possibly help me. I knew that it was something to be done in extremis. I judged my situation to be bleak. I genuinely thought that the hospital might help me and might be a place of healing as the name suggested.
As soon as I arrived I realised that it was a prison, that it did not really exist to help people, that its staff were jailors and that being "on the ward" was an unnecessary dehumanising torment that no one wanted to undergo. Admittedly, there were aspects of the experience that were designed to, and to an extent did, help people.
But mainly the psychiatrist had to keep you in there for a certain amount of time in order not to openly recognise the fact that it is a prison and not a hospital. If he let you out when you wanted to go then that would be to admit that it was a prison and not a hospital. They had to go through the pretence of it being a therapeutic environment of some kind, and that the amount of time you spent there bore some correlation with your "mental health". If it did it was probably more time inside meant more unhealthy.
Admittedly, it was a literal asylum of some kind for some people, people could get rest and escape from stress. But still it was also capable of being very unpleasant.
What do you need when you are distressed? One answer is certainly peace and quiet. The hospital was not often able to offer peace and quiet.
The only solution is to outlaw involuntary detention.
I asked to leave and was told that I could but that if I did I would be taken back the next day by police section.
The second tour/imprisonment began with me being taken to the hospital by police section. I hadn't done anything. I had just been distressed. I was fully in the role of a "mentally ill" person and was seen as such not just by the authorities but also by my friends and family. I regard what my friends and family did in this situation as a betrayal. But how are they to realise that psychiatry is a crime?
The situation I was in this time was compounded by the length of the first hospitalisation and all that that had entailed.
But basically I had behaved in a way that others disapproved of. That's all.
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One interesting observation about my time "on the ward" is the following.
When I got there I noticed people continuously walking up and down looking zombie-like.
I thought to myself - "how fucked up do you have to be to walk up and down compulsively like that?". I was shocked at how they constantly walked up and down and at how "zombified" they looked. I assumed they were "mad".
Two weeks later I was walking up and down compulsively myself. Two weeks later I was exactly the same as them!
Nothing had happened to me in the interim.
I was walking up and down because I was very bored and desperate and I wanted to be let out of the animal pen! And I was being pumped full of medication that dulled all my brain functioning.
The reason I was taken forcibly by police section the second time was not because of my behaviour but because I had refused and resisted incarceration.
I had been being driven to the hospital/prison, by my family I should add, and the car had stopped at a garage at which point I had justifiably and understandably got out of the car and ran away back home.
Not long after arriving back at the house I was deceived into going to talk to some police who quickly handcuffed me and placed me in a confined cage in the back of a van.
There was no reason for the force or handcuffs. There was no attempt to communicate with me.
I regard all force, incarceration and compulsion in psychiatry to be a crime.